Child of Silence Page 2

  “Better go, old woman,” she told herself. “Something bad here.”

  Then she smiled and moved instead toward the house. Not for nothing did her people name her Sees the Dark. Unable to describe the emotion known as fear, Annie knew as second nature the fierce tug of curiosity.

  The sweep of her gaze revealed gray clouds moving in layers, a limb of oak, three mossy stone steps, and the hollow doorway of the house. Entering, her nostrils flared at the scent of rot in the place and other, more recent smells. Excrement, vomit, fear.

  There was something odd in the murky shadows beneath what remained of the roof. Annie blinked, trying to focus. Something on an old mattress in front of the fireplace, something tied to the mattress with clothesline, its eyes rolled back and white as eggs. Something barely alive.

  Annie had been a mother five times. Even in the gloom with her failing eyes she could see what it was. It was a child.

  3 - “I Scream Because I Am a Bird” —Pa-guadal

  Bo awoke with an epic headache and blearily noted an absence of early-morning silence that could only mean one thing. The clock radio, softly cranking out Danny and the Juniors' 1958 hit, “At the Hop,” confirmed her worst suspicion. It was 8:15. She’d overslept.

  “Shit!” She yelled with an enthusiasm that hurt her throat. Madge Aldenhoven was going to kill her. To make matters worse, every item of clothing she pulled from the closet revealed a heretofore unseen stain, tear, or wrinkle.

  “Does this happen to everybody, or just to me?” she asked Mildred. “Do my clothes actually plot against me, or am I acting out a subconscious wish to avoid going to work?’’ The obvious answer made her grin as she pulled on an ancient Irish fisherman's sweater still redolent of the buttered popcorn she'd enjoyed last night during a Pavarotti rerun. The sweater would have been baggy on the stocky tenor; on Bo it resembled a hot-air balloon. The corduroys she found in the back of her closet under a bolt of canvas matched, she noted ruefully, nothing she'd ever owned. What had possessed her to buy red-and-black herringbone? Just looking at the fabric made her feel queasy.

  “Madge,” she wheezed into the bedside phone after dialing the well-known number, “I'm sick. But I'm coming in anyway. I'll stay at the office and catch up on paperwork. Just dock me an hour. I'll be in.”

  The supervisor's voice was businesslike.

  “If you're really sick, stay home. If you're coming in, you've got a new case—”

  “I've what. . . ”

  Bo flung herself on the unmade bed and reveled in its retained warmth.

  “Madge, I've got the flu or something. I can't interview any kids today.

  It was tempting just to drop the bomb, to say, “Madge, you don't know this, but I'm a manic-depressive and if I don't get out from under that grueling job and your ever-present thumb for a while, I may come to work in a jacket with sleeves that tie in back, so give me a break!” So tempting. And so stupid. She'd be out of a job in less time than it would take Aldenhoven to complete the paperwork. Better to play the game.

  “. . .found the child on the Barona Reservation,” Madge was going on, “but it's not an Indian child, so you don't have to worry about dealing with the Indian Child Welfare Council. . .”

  “Madge, I'm really sick, but I don't have any sick leave left. I have to come in. Can't you just give the case to somebody else?”

  The thought of staying home was immensely appealing. Bo trailed a finger over the open book she'd fallen asleep reading—part of the background research for the primitive paintings. She'd bought the book near Lone Pine when she'd gone up into the high desert to photograph the mysterious rock drawings left there by long-vanished artists.

  “I scream because I am a bird,” sang a line of Paiute chant from the page. “The boy will rise up.”

  Bo wished for the three-millionth time that she could make a living with her art. The social work degree that qualified her as an investigator had been earned when it had not occurred to her that she might someday have to support herself. The Paiute chant shimmered curiously on its page as Bo blinked and felt her brow for fever. That eerie, compelling feeling was back. Something happening, something already in progress.

  “It's an easy one,’’ the supervisor continued persuasively. “An NPG. You can probably transfer it out today.”

  A “no parent or guardian.” Bo brightened. NPGs were the cases most coveted by the overworked investigators. Abandoned children. There was nothing to investigate. The court automatically had jurisdiction, and the Department of Social Services automatically got custody. The kids automatically went straight to foster homes. No hearings, no trials. No fuss, no muss. A minimum of paperwork, finished in a day.

  “Okay, okay,” she sighed. “Ill take it.”

  She hadn't really paid any attention to Madge's description of the case, but NPGs were easy. Now she wouldn't have to work on Saturday. She could paint all weekend. Heaven!

  After dropping Mildred with a retired neighbor whose monthly Social Security allotment Bo supplemented with dog-sitting fees, she eased her threadbare BMW onto the freeway. The fog was still thick and most of the cars heading inland had their lights on. The effect was disorienting. Hazy, bulbous globs of light emerging and disappearing in layers of mist. She felt dizzy, hypnotized.

  “Danger,” she pronounced warily. And she didn't mean the traffic.

  “There is nothing but reality,” she reminded herself. Whatever that was.

  And unfortunately it was probably Madge Aldenhoven. All the Madges of the world who made all the rules of the world and then insisted that everybody else observe them. Whether they made any sense or not. Except Madge hadn't been abusive or dictatorial. In fact, she'd been almost nice. And totally out of character.

  It dawned on Bo that Madge must be up to something. It was too late to care. She'd find out soon enough.

  Her office mate, Estrella Benedict, was still in when Bo arrived and switched on the desk lamp.

  “Madre de dios!” the well-dressed Latina yelped. What did you do last night? Drink pulque till dawn in some Tijuana dive? You look like parrot puke and you're an hour late.”

  Bo couldn't help envisioning a hung-over parrot with an ice pack, heaving over a tiny toilet in the corner of a bird cage strewn with tiny, empty bottles. The parrot's eyes would have Xs in them.

  “Thanks, Es.” Bo grinned. “I think I'm getting the flu. What's pool-kay?”

  “Fermented cactus juice. Tastes like rotten lawn clippings and feels like mucus. Distilled, it becomes tequila. But they always leave a worm in the bottle to remind you where it came from. I hear you got a new case.”

  Bo nodded at the new case file on her desk, “JOHNNY DOE” penned across the edge in thick black marker. “Madge seemed to want me to handle it. It's just an NPG.”

  A flicker of concern crossed Estrella's face and then vanished.

  “What is it?” Bo asked in the next second. She missed nothing. Not the slightest nuance of human expression. It was “the gift of the curse,” as Lois Bittner had put it. The heightened acuity that in a manic state could become distorted and bizarre, but was always, always there. It was the reason so many manic-depressives were writers, artists, poets, composers—that ever-present sensitivity to nuance. It was the reason Bo could tell instantly when people were lying. It could also be a pain in the neck.

  “You'd better read the case before you kick off your shoes and order pizza,” Estrella replied. “And for starters, look who's taken personal charge of it over at St. Mary's.”

  Bo pushed aside several unruly stacks of files, memos, and assorted paper to make space atop her desk, and opened the Johnny Doe file to its face-sheet.

  “Andrew LaMarche! Why? He called it in himself at seven this morning. What's Dr. Andrew LaMarche, world-renowned hotshot, doing at work at seven in the morning and taking the time to report cases to Child Protective Services like any other peon?”

  “I don't know why he chose to call it in,” Estrella sighed, “but h
e's at work getting ready to crucify the department at the Martinelli review. Don't you remember? It's today.”

  “I forgot,” Bo murmured.

  There was a moment of silence, the one invariably observed by child abuse workers at the mention of a case in which a child has been murdered.

  And Jennifer Martinelli, all of seven years old, had been murdered. Her mother's crystal-meth-abusing boyfriend threw the child across the living room and onto the handlebars of the motorcycle he'd parked there. Four broken ribs and a shattered breastbone all punctured the little girl's lungs.

  Angela Reavey, the reunification worker who'd believed Christina Martinelli when she said Rob Pickthall would never come near Jennifer again, had recommended to the court that Jennifer be returned to her mother. Only three days before her death Jennifer had left her foster home and rejoined Christina.

  Angela Reavey wouldn't be at the case review called by Dr. LaMarche at St. Mary's Hospital for Children this morning. She'd be home in bed, heavily sedated, unable to cry anymore. Andrew LaMarche, international authority on child abuse, would vent his rage at San Diego County's Child Protective Services and the San Diego County Juvenile Court without her. There would be reporters from every major newspaper in California as well as several of the national media, and a collection of tight-lipped county officials. There would be nobody who'd ever laid eyes on Jennifer Martinelli. It would not be a good day to chat with Andrew LaMarche about an abandoned child.

  The sound of shallow nasal breathing alerted Bo to the presence of Madge Aldenhoven behind her.

  “Bo? I want you to take special care with this case.”

  The veteran supervisor looked, as usual, as if she were expecting to lunch with the Queen Mother. Real pearls. A blue silk shirtwaist that accented her eyes. It had puzzled Bo the entire two years of her job with CPS. Madge, the only one of them who never went out of the building, was the only one who dressed to the teeth every day.

  “No kidding.” Bo grimaced. “You didn't tell me LaMarche was handling this.”

  “Yes,” Madge Aldenhoven went on as if Bo had casually mentioned the fact that Halloween was just around the corner. “He'll be tearing into the department at the Martinelli review right now. Give it your best. We need to look good.”

  “In case you hadn't noticed, “ Bo said, narrowing her wide green eyes to slits, “looking good wasn't a big priority for me today.”

  “You know what I mean,” Madge snapped, tucking a Bic pen through her swan-white hair. “Just do it.”

  And Bo did know. Her court reports, if frequently late, were unerringly full of precisely the information needed by the juvenile judges to determine a child's fate. Bo could assess a situation in minutes. She knew who was lying, who was on drugs, who was covering up a propensity for abusing or molesting children. At court they called her Mandrake the Magician. But nobody, except Estrella, knew why.

  To have Bo Bradley investigate a case meant it would be done right. And everybody in the system, including Andrew LaMarche, knew it.

  The case file held a face-sheet blank except for the name of the reporting party, the doctor himself. Literally nothing was known about the child whose case Bo was supposed to investigate.

  Behind the face-sheet were reports faxed over from the San Diego County Sheriff's Department and from the ambulance service.

  “Responded to call from ANNIE GARCIA, 79, a Paiute Indian living with her daughter and son-in-law, MARIA AND JOSEPH BIGGER FOX, on the Barona Indian Reservation,” Sheriff's Deputy John Greenlea had printed correctly. “GARCIA reported finding an abandoned Caucasian male child in a deserted building on the reservation at about 5:30 A.M. . . .”

  The paramedic's report was more specific.

  “Found male Caucasian child who had been tied to a mattress with clothesline. The child's breath smelled of urea. Suspect dehydration. The body was clammy and the pulse weak and rapid. Suspect shock. Child breathing. No endo-tracheal airway needed. Vomitus and very fluid feces dried on child's clothing and the mattress. Oxygen and 2.5 glucose solution administered IV in ambulance. Child unconscious, secured to gurney. Arrive St. Mary's ER 6:41 A.M.”

  A strange one.

  A shiver rippled along Bo's shoulders and trembled in her hands. That odd feeling again. Something creepy about this case!

  “No big deal,” she told herself philosophically as she headed out the office door. “Just get to St. Mary's while LaMarche is still in the Martinelli review, see the kid, and get out of there.” No big deal.

  4 - The Slaughter of the Innocent

  The conference room was jammed with reporters, most of them young. They bit the ends of pens provided by the hospital and tried to look appropriately shocked without allowing the full impact of the report to sink in.

  The hospital's public relations director finished a subdued and clinical description of Jennifer Martinelli’s final moments with gasp-producing information.

  “Although the child was pronounced dead on arrival at this hospital at 10:23 Thursday night, the San Diego County Medical Examiner's report indicates that the time of death was actually some three hours earlier.” Here he looked somberly at the crowd. “Jennifer lay dead on her mother's living room floor for over two hours before anyone bothered to wonder why she wasn't moving.”

  Perfect.

  No one in the room was breathing.

  Andrew LaMarche had written the PR man's presentation himself only an hour ago. It was the lead-in for his own remarks.

  The four representatives of the Department of Social Services and the three Juvenile Court attorneys looked intently everywhere except at Dr. Andrew LaMarche as he replaced the PR man at the podium.

  “I attended Jennifer Martinelli when she was brought to St. Mary's the first time, a month ago. She was suffering from lacerations on her face, neck, arms, and legs—everywhere, in fact, that her body wasn't protected by clothing. Her mother's live-in boyfriend had chosen to punish her for breaking a piece of his drug paraphernalia by beating her violently with an electrical cord.”

  In a mirror at the far end of the conference room Andrew LaMarche saw himself reflected, the full-spectrum TV camera lights shimmering off his graying mustache and white lab coat. The look was right. Avenging angel. Tight-lipped spokesman for good.

  A facade, but an effective one.

  Practically no one knew the man behind it.

  “At that time,” he went on, “I told Jennifer's Child Protective Services worker, Ms. Angela Reavey. . .” He paused to allow the irony of the emphasized word to sink in, “that until the perpetrator was dead or imprisoned and the mother had completed alcohol detoxification and at least six months of alcoholism treatment, Jennifer should not be allowed near these. . . people.”

  The pause made clear that his personal choice of nouns would have been more like “vermin.” Several of the reporters nodded unconsciously.

  “But as Ms. Reavey has chosen not to be present at this inquiry, we'll have to rely on other representatives of the Department of Social Services for an explanation of why this child was returned to killers within a month. Gentlemen?”

  Andrew LaMarche knew perfectly well that no one from DSS could say a word about this or any other case, even if they had guns at their heads. The law was abundantly clear. The confidentiality of DSS and Juvenile Court records was so tight God couldn't crack it. And it always made the department look bad—as if it were deliberately hiding its incompetence.

  One of the DSS people made vague noises about “deep regret” and “a thorough investigation of the case's handling.” Some of the reporters sneered openly. All of them copied the quotes directly onto notepads. San Diego County's Department of Social Services would look like a drooling idiot in tonight's papers.

  It was a step.

  It wouldn't save Jennifer Martinelli, but it might save another one, like the strange boy brought in this morning, abandoned in some mountain shack. That one appeared to be retarded—a high risk for abuse. That one or the
next. LaMarche didn't care. He just fought for them, fought against a bureaucracy that seemed to value a parent's right to torture offspring over a child's right to grow up unscarred. He would never understand why a genetic relationship should give anyone the right to commit crimes for which in other circumstances they would be imprisoned or put to death.

  “Thank you all for coming,” he intoned, unclipping the tiny microphone from a watered silk tie bought in Paris.

  “The old fag's really pissed over this one!” a young reporter in faded jeans muttered to a companion within earshot of the doctor as the crowd filed out.

  “You're damn right,” LaMarche whispered to himself.

  That everybody assumed his impeccable grooming meant he was gay didn't bother him at all. That, and the French accent he couldn't suppress when he was angry, only added to the mystique he'd spent years refining. The renegade doctor. The eccentric. Champion of the helpless. Brilliant weirdo.